Dmc Decision Rocks Opposition and Creates Dissension in Own Ranks

The decision by the Democratic Movement for Change (DMC) to join the Likud-led coalition government has created turmoil in opposition ranks and has severely shaken the DMC itself although an open split in the party that Prof. Yigael Yadin created less than a year ago has been averted, at least for the time being.

Labor Alignment leaders, after savagely denouncing the DMC’s move, were groping today for ways to create a solid Labor-oriented opposition front. But their own ranks seem hopelessly divided at the moment. Veteran Mapam leader Yaacov Hazan proposed a solid Zionist-Socialist coalition to oppose the rightist Likud regime. He outlined his views in a two-page article published in the Mapam newspaper Al Hamishmar Sunday. Labor Party leader Shimon Peres appealed to former Laborites who defected to the DMC before the elections last May to return to the fold on grounds that the DMC has betrayed its mandate.

SOME DMC LEADERS ANGERED

There is considerable resentment within the DMC over the coalition agreement engineered by Yadin and Shmuel Tamir with Premier Menachem Begin last week. The dissenters are headed by Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, leader of the DMC’s dove-ish Shinooy (Change) faction, who resigned yesterday as leader of the DMC’s Knesset faction. He did not leave the party, however, and retains his Knesset seat. He said his move was in protest against the coalition agreement about which he said he was never consulted.

Rubinstein and others met with Yadin last night but the party leader was not successful in persuading the dissenters to accept his reasons for joining the government. It was agreed, however, that no DMC members would resign but those opposed would continue to fight the decision from within.

Although Yadin argued that he agreed to join the government because of the “state of emergency” in the country, most political observers believe there was a greater emergency within the DMC and regard his decision as a desperate attempt to preserve the party from disintegration. The observers note that the DMC, formed only a few months before the elections, was a catch-all for disillusioned and disgruntled Laborites and others whose only shared belief was the need for change in Israel’s political and social life. But they could not agree on what kind of changes they wanted. Recent polls have shown a sharp decline in public support for the DMC. It is widely believed that if new elections were to be held, Yadin’s party would win no more than five Knesset seats compared to the 15 it won in the May 17 elections.

Under those circumstances, the observers believe, Yadin was convinced that the salvation of the DMC lay in its becoming part of the governing power structure. But he appears to have paid a very high price. Likud yielded nothing more than it was prepared to give the DMC during the past five months of intermittent negotiations when Yadin flatly rejected all of Begin’s offers. What he obtained in the end was the Deputy Premiership for himself and a few of the less important Cabinet portfolios. As a member of the coalition, the DMC will be entitled to speak out on issues on which it differs with Likud and may demand discussion of certain matters in Knesset committees. DMC members will be allowed to vote their conscience on controversial religious matters and its proposals for electoral reform will be considered by a special committee to be established for that purpose. But in exchange, the DMC has given up its famous “seven principles” which gave it the image of a party that placed principles above political expediency.

NEW MINISTERS CHOSEN

A new joke circulating in Israel has it that Begin convinced the DMC to join his government on the basis of “Resolution 242: two ministers and two deputies on all fours.” The DMC Council, after a stormy session last night, designated the four men who will serve in the Cabinet posts to be allocated to it. They are Yadin, 60, Deputy Premier; Meir Amit, 56, former head of Histadrut’s Koor Industries and a former Labor Party member, Minister of Transportation and Communications; Shmuel Tamir, 54, who once headed the Free Center faction in the Knesset, Minister of Justice; and Dr. Israel Katz, 50, a Vienna-born Columbia University graduate, Minster for Social Betterment.

Meanwhile, the Likud Knesset faction announced that two Ministers-Without-Portfolio would be added to the Cabinet, Moshe Nissim of the Liberal Party and Chaim Landau of the Herut wing of Likud. Prof. Yossef Rom, chairman of the Likud committee on government, explained that the two additional ministers were needed to maintain the ratio of approximately one minister for every four coalition members of the Knesset. With the addition of the DMC, the coalition will consist of 78 MKs and the Cabinet will number 19 ministers.